I am Johnny DeKam. Many of you know me as the founder of VIDVOX and original creator of VDMX. Ever since I stepped down in 2004, I’ve been a video designer and director, working mostly in the music industry, as well as Fine Arts and a myriad of other projects. VIDVOX has now reached an epic 20 year anniversary! David and I thought it might be interesting for you to hear more about me, and the humble roots of VDMX that you all love.
So let's start with a deep history. VIDVOX's roots grew directly from making art, and in this regard, has always been creator focused. I started VIDVOX alone, on a mission to build better tools for my own personal work... but how did it all begin? This is an origin story.
Read MoreOne of the best parts of open specifications for file formats is that artists can create visual generators and FX for one piece of software and share their creations with others, regardless of what tools they use.
A few months ago we received an email from Silvia Fabiani asking if we could provide any tips for how to get started with remixing and writing her own shaders, and with a few links covering the basic ideas, she was ready to go. Over the following weeks we noticed that she had posted some of her own compositions on the ISF sharing site and we thought it'd be a great story to bring to the blog for an interview.
Read MoreThe history of VDMX dates back to the late 1990's when Johnny Dekam was developing the software in Max/MSP using the infamous “Nato.0+55+3d” plugins as a follow up to his first software release as VIDVOX called Prophet. Over the next 20 years the project would grow through many iterations to become the software that it is today.
Here we will take a look at the evolution of this project and some of the major release versions since the beginning through images.
Read MoreA few weeks ago we had the pleasure of getting to go to Splice Festival for the first time. Along with getting to participate in workshops and check out great live A/V performances, the inspiring artists talks were a big highlight of the trip. In particular we finally got to meet Lucy Benson and hear about the creative process behind her amazing work. Videos from each of the talks from Splice will be online at some point in the future, and we recommend checking them out, but in the meantime we've got a little advanced interview with Lucy!
Read MoreMy name is Charles-Zoltan (better known as Zoltan or CZ), my path is quite eclectic, I started by studying at the conservatory of music in piano. Subsequently I played and formed rock / dub groups as bassist and guitarist. At the same time I discovered 3DS Max and photoshop and video editing self-educated.
I completed my career by studying sound engineering where I discovered electronic music and its methods of creation. I had the opportunity to collaborate with contemporary artists and other musicians as technical director which led me to discover VDMX as a solution to manage live visuals in 2013. I am quite curious and have a great pleasure learning new things and experimenting with anything.
Read MoreOne of our favorite things is getting to see videos of people from around the world posted online. Last week we caught some visuals from vjZaniZ in the VDMX Facebook Group and had to reach out for more details.
Read MoreCatching bits of action from people using VDMX via Twitter is always great for us and one of the best parts is that we get to connect with people like Mike St. Jean who share with us photos and videos from their latest gigs with amazing musicians... along with the behind the scenes details of how it is all put together that we crave.
Read MoreFor this artist feature we had a chance to talk with someone who has been doing this way longer than we have – by a few decades. It's always a particular pleasure for us to know that the tools used today connect back to a rich history of analog film and video that still have a fingerprint on the modern visual arts. With that experience Charles Atlas is one of those artists who has the special talent of bridging different genres of performance and production into a single cohesive piece.
When asked to send over some videos and images to include with this post Charlie put together an amazing collection for us that goes back 15 years, so strap yourself in for a bit of time travel through video.
Read MoreTo be filed under artist features that have been too long in the waiting is the work of Funken, who have been on our radar of visual artists for a few years and now are excited to finally follow up with for some behind the scenes info.
Read MoreLast month while browsing along on the blogosphere (is that still a word?) we ran into this article about Chris Speed Visuals on ShareSynth and of course had to follow up for our own interview to find out more about these glitch-tastic creations. For people who remember the days of dragging around lots of old analog gear to gigs, as well as those who missed the chance, will have a lot to enjoy in this one.
Read MoreOne our favorite questions for people who have been using VDMX is to ask them how they would show it to someone who has never used it before and we are especially excited to see how teachers are introducing the software in classrooms and workshops. Everyone learns best in a different way and it is always helpful for us to see new approaches to VJ techniques. Last week we were joined for a guest tutorial by Kalma who showed off an example of how to get started with VDMX and for this post we are excited to get more information about the artist behind the workshops.
Read MoreOne of the best parts of being a new media artist is having the ability to connect so many different ideas and tools together, both literally and figuratively. Recently we've been in touch with Luciana Haill and Sam Wiehl who shared with us some of the details behind their latest collaboration PZYK SKAN which brings together so many amazing things into a single project that we had to share it with all of you. The initial description was “I use PandoraStar strobe lights as precursors for EEG brainwave projects, where signals from the brain of the audience are triggers to live events via Max Msp, Ableton, OSC and recently VDMX when we collaborated” and you can read all about it below!
Read MoreMy name is Rodrigo Carvalho. I am from Porto/Portugal. I work with live visuals, code and interactive art from screen based work, to interactive installations, audiovisual live acts, or interactive visuals for stage performance...
Read MoreA few weeks ago Patricio Gonzalez Vivo (creator of the infamous Book of Shaders, one of the best online resources for learning GLSL) released a new project known as the Pixel Spirit Deck, a set of tarot cards where each image includes includes code that can be used to draw the shape...
Read MoreTo be filed under artist profiles that have been a long time coming is Dan Tombs who has in his time as a visual artist worked with more musicians and bands than I have fingers and then some. One of the things that we love about his setups are the usage of analog equipment as part of the setup and we've asked him to fill us in on everything from how he got started with video, what gear he's collected over the years and all about his most recent collaboration with Gold Panda.
Read MoreThis past week in our inbox was a link to an amazingly beautiful abstract music video for the song Jeux off Uncle Skeleton's new album Cocoa Beach.
The visual artist who collaborated on this project was Mike Kluge (MKAV), an audio/visual artist living in Nashville, TN who works on freelance projects such as music videos, live visuals, art installations, interactivity, and content for tours told us a bit about how it all came together.
Read MoreEvery week we receive emails from people who want to share their work with us (keep it coming!) and a few days ago Graffmapping sent us a link to this video showing off their recent exploration into merging the ideas from video mapping and graffiti to project visuals in public spaces.
Read MoreToday we're joined by the fantastic Wiley Wiggins who in addition to working as an actor and animator for film (of Dazed and Confused, Waking Life, Computer Chess fame) AND as an interactive designer (currently working on an adventure game called Thunderbeam), is also an amazing visualist. For this post Wiley has written up his history of getting into performing live visuals and how things have changed in just the last few years as technology rapidly changes.
Read MoreLast April on the VIDVOX blog we featured the work Zak Norman who had created the amazing 100% live generated visuals for the 2015 Squarepusher tour. One year later it seems things are still going strong, this time for Squarepusher's new band Shobaleader One.
Read MoreIn the long history of human arts and sciences, the two have often found inspiration in the other. While science today seeks to uncover the dark mysteries beyond our current comprehension, visual artist Valentina Berthelon and musician Tobias Freund have begun to create a series of audiovisual pieces including ‘Dark Matter_Dark Energy’ and ‘History of Darkness’ which seek to share the experience of exploring these unknown forces lurking in the universe...
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